12 Apr
2000
12 Apr
'00
11:50 p.m.
Here's where that little factoid came from.
From The Microsoft File by Wendy Goldman Rohm 1998,
Times Books, a
division of Random House, Inc., New York. ISBN 0-8129-2716-8
"Microsoft DOS still contained lines of code written by DRI's founder,
Gary Kildall. In fact, IBM had been so paranoid about that when they
realized Gates had sold them a clone, they paid Kildall about $800,000 - a
pittance given the billions Microsoft had raked in from the product over
the years - in exchange for his promise never to sue."
"Paul Braun" <nerdware(a)laidbak.com>
wrote:
Paul Braun
NerdWare -- The History of the PC and the Nerds who brought it to you.
nerdware(a)laidbak.com
www.laidbak.com/nerdware
And IBM apparently found enough code lifted
directly from CP/M to
justify an $800,000 settlement with Kildall to keep him from suing them.
Very interesting. I've heard a lot of claims that Tim copied actual code
from CP/M, including mentions of intact copyright notices (which I
couldn't find when I examined an IBM DOS 1.0 diskette), but I've never
before heard about a settlement. Do you have any further references or
info? I'd love to learn more about this.
The thing that I find amazing about the idea that Tim might have copied DR
code is that CP/M is so small and simple that I wouldn't expect it to be
worth the effort to do a binary translation of it, especially if you plan
to replace the file system code (which is the bulk of the BDOS) anyhow.